As the helicopter raced over
the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest Saturday
morning, the pilot explained his rationale for
flying low and fast.

"We try to fly about 300 feet
above the ground," said the Jackson County Sheriff's
deputy. "It's better than at high altitude. This way
you are only a target for a few seconds."

Proposed law would boost
penalties

U.S. Rep. Greg Walden
supports the Federal Lands Counter-drug Strategy
and Enforcement Enhancement Act, which increases
penalties for those convicted of growing
marijuana on federal lands.

Known as House Resolution
5645, it was introduced earlier this year by
U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif.

The bill would
dramatically increase penalties for growing and
manufacturing illegal drugs on public lands.

Penalties would include:

A 10-year prison term in
addition to existing prison terms for
violating the current laws.

A five- to 10-year prison
term for using a poison, chemical or other
hazardous material while growing drugs on
federal land.

A 10-year prison term for
diverting water or clear-cutting timber.

A prison term for
assembling a booby trap on federal property
where a controlled substance is
manufactured, to be served consecutively to
any term already imposed.

A stiffer sentence for
pot growers who use a firearm in the
commission of their crime.

Folks who grow marijuana on
federal forestland have been known to take shots at
unwanted visitors, he will tell you.

He and the copilot — both of
whom asked not to be named or photographed because
of the sensitivity of their work — were flying U.S.
Rep. Greg Walden, R-Hood River, to Gold Beach to
discuss the growing marijuana problem on federal
land with a team of drug fighters called Southern
Oregon Multi-Agency Marijuana Eradication and
Reclamation — or SOMMER.

En route, the deputies
pointed out sites where patches of marijuana plants
had been confiscated in the mountains overlooking
the Applegate Valley. Most of the raided patches
resembled clear cuts from the air.

The pot isn't just on federal
land: the helicopter flew over countless marijuana
plants growing behind tall fences adjacent to homes
in Jackson and Josephine counties, which one of the
deputies described as "pseudo medical marijuana"
patches. Some of the sites had more than two dozen
plants that look like oversized tomato plants from
above.

But the pilot steered clear
of what he described as two active "cartel grows" on
federal land farther into the flight, noting he
didn't want to tip off the growers.

A "grow" refers to an illegal
marijuana patch. "Cartel" is a reference to Mexican
drug-trafficking organizations which law enforcement
officials say are now involved in growing marijuana
on federal land in the region.

To a man, the seven sheriffs
in the group organized by Jackson County Sheriff
Mike Winters urged Walden for more funding to beef
up their departments, which have been hit hard by
budget cuts over the years.

Unlike domestic pot
operations of years past, many of the plantations
now growing on federal land are operated by Mexican
drug-trafficking organizations who are well-financed
and well-armed, the sheriffs said.

"The longer it goes on, the
harder it will be for us to overcome," Winters told
Walden. "They are better funded than us ... There
are more of them than there are of us."

In fact, the U.S. Department
of Justice's National Drug Intelligence Center's
2010 national drug threat assessment released in
February reported that the number of plants removed
from public land grew more than 300 percent from
2004 to 2008, primarily from pot gardens operated by
Mexican drug cartels. The pot growers favor public
land because of its remoteness and because it can't
be seized or traced to an owner, the report said.

A separate 2008 NDIC report
on cartel-related drug-trafficking organizations
said the Federation cartel was active in Klamath
Falls, and undetermined cartels were working in
Medford and Roseburg.

To consolidate
law-enforcement efforts, Winters came up with the
SOMMER project and received a $202,000 federal grant
to find, investigate, remove and clean up marijuana
gardens on federal land this summer. Other counties
participating in SOMMER include Josephine, Curry,
Coos, Douglas, Klamath and Lake.

The seven counties pulled out
more than 55,000 pot plants from federal land in
2009, with nearly 30,000 of them coming from Jackson
County.

The Domestic Cannabis
Eradication/Suppression Program, the Drug
Enforcement Administration operation that funded
SOMMER, reported earlier this year that pot
plantations on federal land in Oregon, California
and Washington are among the biggest producers in
the nation.

After observing one
eradicated pot plantation after another during the
flight, Walden concluded to no one in particular,
"We used to grow timber."

The congressman, who told the
sheriffs he would do everything he could to help
their cause, is urging U.S. Agriculture Secretary
Tom Vilsack and U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar
to increase their efforts to stop pot growing on
federal lands. Vilsack oversees the Forest Service,
while Salazar is in charge of the Bureau of Land
Management.

In a separate letter to
Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski, Walden asked for
increased assistance from both the Oregon National
Guard and the state police in helping stop the
illegal drug operations.

"These growing operations are
typically guarded largely by armed foreign
nationals, who pose a direct and dangerous threat to
ranchers, hikers and anyone enjoying our public
lands," Walden warned in the letters.

The Justice Department's 2010
national drug threat assessment concluded the
operations "constitute the greatest drug-trafficking
threat" to the nation, he added.

Like Winters, Curry County
Sheriff John Bishop told Walden that his deputies
are spread very thin, although working together
through SOMMER has boosted their combined resources.

But overtime and flight time
eats into their extremely tight budgets, Bishop
said.

"We are getting into country
now where we can't expect our guys to hike in there
in 120-degree weather, cut the plants, haul that out
and then haul out the trash and toxins and all
that," he said. "We've got to have helos, and that
is expensive."

Helicopters enable law
enforcement officers to hit more "grows" per week,
an activity that averages about three patches a week
during this time of year, Winters told the
congressman.

"In the old days, when we
used to hike in with the steep terrain and
everything, our guys were wiped out," he said,
adding they were lucky to hit one patch a week.

"And there is so much more
dope now," he added. "You aren't dealing with just a
few plants now. You are dealing with grows that have
5,000 plants."

In 2009, his department
assisted law enforcement officers just across the
state line in Siskiyou County, Calif., raiding a
patch which had 200,000 plants, Winters said.

"We've picked up our
efficiency and are doing the best we can but we
don't have enough people," Winters said. "Most of us
are half-staffed or losing people."

"Consolidation is absolutely
the only way to combat this — we just don't have the
resources," stressed Josephine County Sheriff Gil
Gilbertson.

Klamath County Sheriff Tim
Evinger said departments can't hire law enforcement
officers on a seasonal basis to eradicate pot on
federal land.

"These are guys you are
pulling off the street to handle this work," Evinger
said. "So you have to pay them overtime or go short
on shifts."

In answer to a question by
Walden, all the sheriffs said the lion's share of
the illegal pot patches they are eradicating are on
federal land. They also observed that using federal
funds literally ties them up in red tape.

"The cartels shouldn't be
able to do business easier than us," Winters said at
one point.

While the sheriffs were quick
to tell Walden the Forest Service and BLM work with
them, they asked for more federal help.

"It's already a collective
effort," Winters said. "We need them to come in and
help us a little more. It's their land.

"The problem we get into as
county sheriffs, we have to protect our people from
county line to county line," he added. "They
recreate, fish and hunt out there. So we end up
having that responsibility whether we like it or
not."

Noting the cartels use money
raised from pot to fund other criminal activities,
the sheriffs said they often find gang members and
others manning the illegal patches.

"Now they are going in with
weapons and camping," Bishop said. "It is more
dangerous going into gardens now than anytime in the
24 years I've been in law enforcement."

Reach reporter Paul Fattig at
541-776-4496 541-776-4496
or e-mail him at pfattig@mailtribune.com.